I am an artist - photographer, illustrator, and sometimes painter. I was born and raised in New York but I now live in France with my husband in a nice little suburb only 10 miles from Paris. I am disturbed, funny, sad and happy all at once! Read my blog and my thoughts. :)

Thursday, May 24, 2012

I have to post about this. If some of his friends read it and get upset, so be it but I have to get it all out. I will not use names, though, to protect reputations but the details are specific enough for some that know him will know the names. The flow of this post may also be somewhat disjointed because my mind is racing, so forgive the rants and tangents.

My old friend took his own life Monday morning. He inhaled a tank full of helium (his job was an entertainer for children's parties so he had one of these). He was always needing to be the center of attention and he was always dramatic about things. He had already updated his website the night before to say he had passed away (in the third party) and left a message on Facebook that read:

Xanadu has been breached, my friends.

Cry "Havoc!" and let slip the vultures and jackals.

No more past. No more future. Both have been taken away.

If only those who knew less didn't always think they knew better.

It took just one year of Hell to undo a lifetime of hope.

I am too lost to be found and too broken to be fixed.

Let the Monday morning quarterbacking begin.

- His Name

PS: Kudos to my sister V, my niece K and my nephew G for orchestrating the above. Please pray for my mother M, for she is now in their care.

He also left a note on the garage door:

"Took my Mom, Took my Home, Took my Life" and left his sister V's phone number

My friend was troubled his whole life. He was born to his mother when she was already 50 years old and his father wanted nothing to do with him. I imagine and assume abuse was involved and perhaps his mother turned a blind eye to it. He grew up demanding toward his mother. She gave him whatever she could and when he had tantrums (in his 20s) she relented. He walked all over her, taking over every space in the house to store his epic comic book/superhero collection. I experienced this first hand.

The P.S. of his Facebook message needs explaining. He has 3 half-sisters. His mother had them before she remarried (I can't remember if their father died or it was a divorce). They are quite a bit older than he, and resented him for their own personal reasons. Each of the sisters had families of their own so my friend was the one living with the mother in the house in New Jersey. As she got even older, she became frail and my friend was responsible for paying the house bills. He soon couldn't do it due to his inability to grow up. He actually became an emotional cripple. His sisters moved the mother down to Florida where she now resides in an assisted living facility and money is needed to keep her there. The house went up for sale a year ago and my friend tried to fight it. His idea of fighting was to try and get a lawyer. He started a KickStart campaign to gain funds for legal fees when so many of his friends told him to just use the money to put his stuff in storage and start to look for another place. He would not part with the house. Tried to somehow part with some of his epic comic collection but that was even more traumatizing so he decided that this was all his family's fault and make them feel responsible and guilty for his demise.

I am not saying his family is innocent by any means but he was an adult even if he didn't want to face it. He never wanted to face it. Whenever I would bring up anything that would lead to a philosophical conversation about our lives, he literally would flare up. Maybe he is best at peace now. There is nothing more for him to prove to himself. He raised the white flag. He needed therapy - intensive psychological counseling but even as I type that, I fear that it would never have worked anyway at his age and the enormous depth of his issues.

Our friendship was also a battle because whenever he was phasing out of reality (talking about and working on things other than real productivity that would lead to being responsible, getting a real job and/or his own place) he would dismiss me. He had a good heart, though and became known to many people in the heavy metal music industry as an entertainer and so he dies almost a legacy among that crowd. He was loved and though I loved him, too, many people do not understand how difficult he was to be friends with. He contacted me almost only if he needed something from me and I suspect he did that with many others. He collected friends the way he collected comics. They had to be what he wanted them to be. I learned that early on and made a conscious effort to keep our friendship at arm's length for self-preservation.

I am very sad. I am very angry but I am not shocked. He was self-centered and selfish and suicide is very much a selfish act. He left an ex-girlfriend who feels lost, and friends who feel he was like the messiah. I don't feel either of those but I do feel the loss. We did have some deep-ish talks at the beginning of our friendship over 20 years ago. He did care about and love me in his own way. We did have many understandings about how our families were and more importantly, he was the first man to ever say I was beautiful as a curvaceous fat woman. He made sure I knew that and because of him, my self-esteem was lifted a bit. I will miss him greatly, even though he was not in my life as an active friend - last seeing him in 2003 and speaking with him every other year thereafter - but I always knew he was there in the peripheral and he did/does have a place in my heart.

I am going to the funeral tomorrow. The family arranged for only a 4 hour viewing. I don't know if there is a burial. His mother is not going to be told. I suppose that is for the best. This will be closure for me. I will do what I can to remember all the good stuff and in fairness, I have to say there was. He WAS a good guy and he was fun to be around when things were kept light.